Thoughts on ethnic and international conflicts and the democratic ideal.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

The Islamist cause

It is popular nowadays to talk about a conflict between Sunni and Shiites or between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I suspect those conflicts are exaggerated. Consider the following:

- After the Iranian revolution Iran promoted Islamist revolutions everywhere in the Arab world. They didn't seem to care about the Sunni-Shiite difference.

- Just like the Gulf States Iran spends a lot of money on promoting radical Islamist goals. Often they support the same goals such as Hamas. Hezbollah too was until recently generally seen positively in the Arab world.

- Saudi Arabia and Qatar supported the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. They supported and still support Islamist organizations that want to establish an Islamist dictatorship. Yet this didn't stop those countries from initially seducing the West to support the uprisings with the claims that they wanted democracy.

- This raises the question how real the Saudi hatred of Iran really is. It might just as well be another insincere excuse to get the US involved in Syria.

- At the moment it appears that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are divided on Egypt. With Qatar supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi's opposing it. However, the Saudi's traditionally support the Salafists. And while the Salafists initially supported the military they seem now turning towards the Brotherhood.

- Morsi initially opened up towards Iran. Later the relationship cooled but interestingly after the recent military take-over in Egypt this was condemned by Iran.

- There is a kind of feud between Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Hezbollah and Assad on the other because the Saudi's suspect them of having been involved in the murder of Hariri. Hariri was very close to the Saudi royal family and had the Saudi nationality. This too has little to do with sectarian issues.

So in my opinion spreading Islamism goes above nearly all other issues as the main motive of the Gulf States.

1 comment:

Well both Iran and Saudi Arabia are interested in promoting and supporting Islamism and Islamist causes throughout the Muslim world. This much is true, but you have to understand this is precisely what makes them rivals. Sometimes they support the same factions (as in Bosnia), while at other times they support opposing factions (as in Iraq), but even when supporting the same faction they compete for influence with them. It is important to understand they are promoting distinct strands of Islamism and distinct models of Islamic state.

The situation is similar to the one as existed between the USSR and China after the Sino-Soviet split.

As far as the Sunni-Shia divide goes, it is also significant Saudi Arabia is also not a mainstream Sunni state, but is Wahhabist instead. Even so it is able to win influence in traditional Sunni countries, as is Iran. So I would agree that it is easily possible to overstate the importance of the Sunni-Shia split (except to Salafis).

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What makes people support a leader or a government and what makes them associate themselves with a country? These core issues in international relations fascinate me and I am looking for work studying those issues. I studied psychology and anthropology.